by KUBOA
CM: So, tell me a little bit about life after the album. Life in Memphis.
BG: Not much to tell, really. I mean it made a splash, but briefly. And we were asked to play everywhere. Suddenly, like we woke up with extra cachet. We did the John’s Shell, I don’t know how many times. Used to be we’d open for everybody, Mudboy, Expanding Head Band—whatever happened to those guys? Who were those guys? (laughs) Uh, Edgar Winter, we opened for once. James Gang. Pacific Gas and Electric, Tony Joe White. Then, after Turntable Poison, we were headliners. It was great, a heady period, sure, especially for Skippy and Crafty, Castor and Pollux as I called them. They thought they’d landed in pigshit heaven, man. And we had all these other bands opening for us—man. And looking up to us. We were teenagers and we had these other guys, girls, coming up to us, asking about Dickinson and what I meant by “hoodoo on the bloody muddy” or some shit, something they heard on the album. It was weird. But, you know, I was kind of lost at that time—this was right before Lor came into my life—and I had all these groupies, all these chicks, and I’d ball them, right?, but really I’d be thinking about the music, about what’s next, musically, about soloing, about getting my axe to sound like a sax. I was way gone on the music, man, and it just shoved everything out of me, everything else. I didn’t know then, that I was unraveling, like an old sweater. I mean, I loved the chicks, you know, I loved them. But, they knew I was nowhere man, after we’d do it and I’d be lying there, I’d be a million miles away and they’d get this sad look. In the morning they’d be all like, let’s go to Barksdale’s for breakfast, and, well, I was using some speed at the time and my appetite was nil. So, they’d go off and I’d pick up the guitar. That’s just the way I was then. All music all the time. (laughs)
CM: Who played with you around this time?
BG: No one played with us, man. I mean, aside from Jim or Sid sitting in.
CM: I meant, who opened for you, at the Shell, etc.
BG: Oh, yeah. Well, there were a lot of groups around Memphis then. None of them went anywhere, but that was ok. They were making music, they were happy. Kids, most of them. Some were good, some were real good, you know? Well, the Hombres, of course. They had that hit. Um…
CM: “Let it all Hang Out.”
BG: Right, right. They opened for us. Good guys. And that song went some place. They were cool. Don’t know why they didn’t get any higher. Uh, The Gentrys were around, but, I can’t remember playing with them. They might have preceded us. This is all such ancient history, you know. I don’t recall it all. Who else, who played with us at the Shell, Lor?
LE: Randy and the Radiants.
BG: Did they? Ok. Oh, you know, there were all these groups back then with psychedelic names, uh, Raspberry Batman—they were funny, Jack and the Beanstalks, The House of Dr. Dee, The Savage God, The Seven Madmen—
LE: Without Feathers.
BG: Right, they were good actually. Almost had a hit—what was that sucker—oh! “You’re Standing on my Train.” Nice little number. Running Dog, Peabody and Sherman—that’s a funny story, really. They started at Peabody School, so that’s where the Peabody comes in, and the lead singer’s name was really Sherman. When they opened for us—I remember it was really fucking hot that night, one of those Memphis nights where the humidity feels like urine in the air—and they were talking to us backstage. And I said, I like your name—I’m a big Bulwinkle fan. They had no fucking idea what I was talking about. (laughs) They really named themselves that with no knowledge of the cartoon at all.
LE: Lovelights.
BG: They sucked. Just some guys with cheap instruments doing jams because they didn’t really know how to play, you know, so they thought it was avant garde or something to do these instrumentals, like it was jazz. Horrible. Oh, Baudelaire and the Hashish Assassins. Funny guys. Sort of Memphis’ answer to the Bonzo Dog Band. They were just goofing. Doing dope and making up this funny shit on stage, half monologue and half folk music. Had a song called “Abbie Hoffman meets the Roy Cohn Zombies.” (laughs) They were too much for Memphis. I don’t know where they went. Their leader was a cat named, uh, Shlomo Stern. Writer, really. Did he ever publish? Does anyone know? Who else, Creole, you were there?
CM: Uh, Consenting Adults. Tommy Staley—he was good.
BG: Yeah, I knew those cats.
CM: The Moviegoers. Wandering Dog. That was Toby’s group---kid could play a 12-string. The Saints. Jeff’s Collie.
BG: Shit, yeah. I remember all those guys. Toby—yeah, I loved that cat. Chick sang with Jeff’s Collie, what was her name? Hayley? Something beautiful like that. And she could sing, Big Mama Thornton kind of voice out of this little wispy Southern gal. She sang, “Ball and Chain” just like Janis. And, they had an original, called “What Passes Here for Heaven.” They were alright.
LE: You had a thing with her, right?
BG: Oh, jeez, yeah, I did. It was all during that time, you know. She was great though. Little dark haired pixie, great jugs. She was a little Jewish gal, I think. Or Mediterranean, uh, what was that that Danny Thomas was? Lebanese? Maybe she was that. Anyway, doesn’t matter, she was a beautiful chick. I could have loved her. Maybe I did, I don’t remember. That’s horrible isn’t it? Jeff’s Collie, I thought they would have made it, out of all of them, cuz of her, man, she had some pipes. Like that teenage chick singer for Fantasy, anybody remember her? And their big hit was an instrumental—figure that out. Where is she now, you have to wonder? Why me and not her? It’s enough to make you question the whole machinery, you know?
CM: So, between Turntable Poison and your California period, lies a great gulf that not a whole lot of people know about. I think we should try to understand what led you to this change, a real sea change in the eyes of the public. Can you talk a bit about that time?
BG: First, as we’ve discussed, I don’t see that big a change between Memphis and L.A. I mean, geographically, yes, Big City vs. hometown, sure. But, as for my art, there’s a direct line from Turntable Poison to Rain and Other Distractions. There’s a road if you wanna delineate it.
CM: Really? That’s what I want to hear about. Not just the line between the works but what was going on in your life. I mean, stylistically, you did go from blues/psychedelic rock, in the British invasion vein, to soft rock…
BG: Fuck that distinction. It’s really the lyrics that matter, isn’t it? I mean, lyrically, compare the two. I see only maturity. A man growing older and coming to terms with that, what that means, at this time, in this place. And then Lorelei. Of course. Of paramount consideration. My prime focus, the biggest change to happen in my life since Mel Bay (laughs).
CM: Well, run us through the specifics. What happened after the album?
BG: Ok, so we got a local reputation, a sort of groundswell, that started small and then ran along the faultline that runs under the Bluff City. We were what they call an underground success, what Memphis specializes in. We were talked about but you had to be part of the cognoscenti, the insiders. I hated this, if I was aware of it—I really don’t remember. Keep in mind, all I wanted to do was play my guitar and write songs. And I was writing at an astonishing clip and artists were picking up on it, and, well, the money started coming in. See, in a way, I was fortunate. I never had to sack groceries at Piggly Wiggly or teach school, or cut lawns. Writing songs, I learned early, brought in the bucks. And a lot of the talent coming out of Nashville, well, a lot of those guys were singing my stuff. See, at that time, everyone wanted to play and sing, but not everyone could write. So I wrote. And, even if we never performed any of it, which we didn’t, they were my songs, and they were popping up on the radio. Sebastian did, “Lemmy Caution’s Incubus,” and I think that was really the start of it. That was big for him—he has that voice, you know, like he’s sitting next to you, and it perfectly fit the song. God bless him—no slouch at writing songs himsel
f, he really took me under his wing, sort of. Not much has been made of that connection, but John, early on, taught me the logistics of writing for money, of getting my stuff with one of the music publishers. A lot of artists did this, you know, kind of like what Dylan was doing with The Basement Tapes, except that took on a whole life of its own, because it was Bob. So, I did some demos, at Ardent with Jim’s help, and others, I just wrote, you know, just committed them to paper and John helped me get them disseminated. It worked well then to do that. I don’t know if it still does. Probably, though I don’t do that anymore. I’m writing, obviously, for myself more these days. So, money was coming in, we were playing regionally. We opened for The Airplane at the Coliseum. For Canned Heat in Little Rock. We were part of a triple bill with The James Gang and Rare Earth in Nashville. In Nashville, we were hanging out with Dylan and Johnny Cash, you know, Dylan introduced us, calling us, “the best blues group since Graham Bond.” Bob, he gets this reputation for being aloof, but, man, that is one generous cat, you gotta know him. Who else did we play with at that time—such a bombastic time—right before the implosion, you know? It was all so ripe, so ready to burst. What’s that word for a plant that explodes outward, sends its seeds out—dehiscence. That was 1968-69. No one could see the end from there, no one knew. It was all still beautiful, it was all Itchycoo Park, you dig? Let’s see. We played with Carlos.
CM: Santana.
BG: Right, right. We gigged with them. Well, opened for them, and then Carlos joined us for our encore, joined us for our, Jesus, what? a 42 minute live version of “Blues for Wendy Ward.” Played some stinging guitar man. He and I went at it, riffing, playing off each other, swapping leads. And, damnation, that kid he’s got drumming for him---he’s fucking Buddy Rich reincarnated. Wait, is Buddy Rich dead? (laughs) I guess he can’t be reincarnated unless he’s dead.
Creole, you do the research, man, find out if Buddy’s still with us (laughs) and make me sound sensible here, dig? I want this to have some semblance of significance Some sense of time. If I’ve got stuff out of sequence, put in stuff that I couldn’t have known at that time, you straighten it out, right? You make it into the story of my life. You’re the man, you’re the storyteller. I leave it all in your capable hands. This is just a collection of ramblings, right? Hey, man, what are you gonna do with this shit? It suddenly occurred to me, what if this doesn’t make sense? But, you’ll do it, right? You’ll be my legacy. This conversation—this is like, what, novel length, right? Already longer than The Crying of Lot 49. So, when this comes out, I’ll be vindicated, right, I’ll be made sense of. More than any man deserves, I guess. But, hell, why else are we doing this? It’s gotta be a story or people aren’t gonna read it, aren’t gonna care. It’s gotta have an arc and that arc has to end with some kind of positive energy, some chi. You know how to do this, right? I’m counting on this being my record, what’s gonna make sense out of something that really doesn’t. A man’s life. An artist’s life, if I can speak in such terminology. Is that what we’re after? Ok. Hell, where was I?
CM: Carlos Santana.
BG: Right. A fine guy, a good guy. He’s such a gentle man, you know? Gentleman and gentle man. He’s probably the most centered cat I know. And, music, well, he just drips music. It comes out of his fingertips like liquid electricity, I’ve never played with anyone better. It’s all so effortless for him. And he lives it, music and spirituality, what we’re all really looking for, what we all really want our lives to be. He’s really a template for the rest of us. Anyone starting out, you could do a lot worse than following what he does. And I think we’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg with him. I think Santana may change the way we listen to music. If I had to pick two groups to watch in the 70s, two that are gonna set the pace for the rest of us, it would be Carlos and the boys, and The Band. The Band—I don’t know them very well, Bob introduced us once, but they were kind of into their own thing and didn’t really hang with us, you know? Levon’s from Arkansas, you know? Everyone thinks all those cats are from Canada, but Levon’s one of us, man. He’s a good guy, a talented guy, with a roomful of voice.
We played with Sha Na Na. (laughs) We did one of our stranger things, at the Auditorium North Hall with The Nice and The Flock and Henry Cow. That was a weird night, because, well, we didn’t really fit it. This was the beginning of prog rock—sort of, it wasn’t really time, yet--and these guys, they were out there, I mean, beautiful cats, and Henry Cow had that guy--Frith—what was his name?—weird cat, and, well, they were all Moog Synths and Synclaviers and violins and even marimbas, and, hell, we were just this heavy guitar oriented trio, you know? It was an odd marriage that didn’t really work. And I think the crowd was there to see us, because, you know, who the hell were these foreigners with their off-the-wall songs and instrumentation? And even though a lot was tolerated back then—I mean, Jesus, everyone had to have their 15 minute drum solo—every fucking concert, every fucking group—the crowd didn’t warm to Gentle Giant—which was (is) a really tight combo, playing some farout stuff. I think later, they returned to Memphis and played the Coliseum in front of Tull, and went down a lot better. Anyway, we started hearing this, you blew them off the stage and shit like that. But, you know, all that competitive stuff, that’s just for the media. The groups don’t do that shit. You know, you don’t go out on stage and say, I’m gonna make their guitarist look silly. There’s a lot more fellow-feeling among musicians. So, Christ, what was my point? We were playing these gigs, getting bigger, getting a rep. This was the end of the sixties. There was talk of a concert in upstate New York that was gonna blow everybody away. And we had just signed on with Pete Holder, who was both lawyer and agent.
Well, Pete said, he thought he could get us in on this New York concert. He was talking to Bill Graham, who was bringing in some new acts, one of which, I remember was Cocker, who nobody knew. And Graham was kind of holding the proceedings hostage, making demands, etc. And Lennon was going to play, they said, but Hoover, that bastard, was keeping him out of the states, and, anyway there was all this legal maneuvering going on, and, somehow, it just never happened. You know, if Black Lung had played Woodstock it would have been a different history, right? We’d be talking about a different story right now. Hell, we’d probably still be together.
So, we didn’t do that.
And we didn’t do Wattstax, either. (laughs) It’s funny now, but, at the time, it seemed to sound some kind of death knell to us. Or maybe just to me. I felt marginalized, like we were from this backwater town and everything was happening elsewhere, like you know, how everybody in Memphis feels about New York, or it was San Francisco for a while. That inferiority thing. Of course, it’s only in retrospect that you see what Memphis had, what we had going on there, right around the corner. I mean, everybody wants to know if I know Elvis, you know. Everybody asks me that, everybody even in the business. He’s revered, and that’s right, that’s right. But, I mean, even McCartney wanted to know if I’d ever met Elvis once he heard I was from Memphis. I wanted to say, man, Memphis is more than Elvis, as great as he was. Of course, the truth is, I did meet him. Once. It was at a benefit show and it was backstage. I was roadying for Ike Turner—briefly, yeah, I did that. Just to get in, you know. I was, what, 16 or something. 15. I don’t remember. And Elvis came backstage—I think he was mostly staying in Hollywood, then, making all those execrable movies--and I was like right there next to him and he had just done this kickass set and the crowd was eating him like pep-pills. And he sat down next to me and turned over and said, you’re in Black Lung, right? I mean, this guy was fucking huge but he knew his home stuff. He knew what was going on. I was impressed—hell, I was blown away. So, yeah, I’ve got my Elvis story. I’m from Memphis, I met Elvis. It’s not much of a story, really is it? I mean, I know people who know Elvis, right? Dig? But, man, lemme tell you. From where we were the
re was Ike and Isaac and Carla and that whole Stax group. Cropper, man. They were gods. They were like the best thing we’d ever seen or heard. Just to have sat in with Cropper makes my whole career worth while—I mean it, man, Cropper and the Horns. I played with them. When they were at their peak, too. That’s what I want people to ask me. What about fucking Booker T.? Did you know him? Did you ever get to sit in with the Hi Rhythm Section? These are the questions I wanna answer. So, like, I remember the whole Wattstax thing—it was all so casual in Memphis. It was like, you wanna go, you wanna play with us this weekend? No one understood what it all was gonna mean. How could they, right? How could they? Of course, this was while it was spinning out of control for me. Slowly spinning out of control, like I could chart it. Like I could write it out on a graph—the Venn diagram of how to have a nervous breakdown.
And the sixties were winding down like a colorful toy that was starting to show its cracks and whose motor was creaky with rust. Altamount followed. Manson. Things were getting grim. More and more people in the street but it didn’t look like those fuckers in Washington were gonna do a damn thing different—the war, shit, look at it, it’s just deeper and deeper shit. And they were turning hoses on kids. Chicago happened, Abbie was arrested and tried. They tied a man to a chair—this was 1968, man, not 1868. I was aghast, the whole country was aghast, I mean, those who cared. It seemed the vultures had descended and taken over. They were picking the bones of America, licking their slathering jaws and, well, it all was just so bleak bleak bleak. When they shot the kids at Kent, I went into a tailspin. I wish I had Neil’s presence of mind—I mean, he picks up his guitar and writes, “Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,” man, and just put it all out there, naked, true. It was like Lennon blasting us with “Revolution.” And, man, I was just so out of it, I was just so fucking passive. I was inert, man. I couldn’t feel. You gotta understand, I wanted to be on the front lines, but I was so far away, I was in fucking Nether World, you know?
Dylan asking, “How does it feel to be on your own like a complete unknown?” and I kept thinking about that and I was one gone gommie. I was feckless. I couldn’t see myself in the mirror.
There was still hope but, damn, it was spinning too fast. It seemed like every fucking day something was happening that you had to respond to, you know? To not respond was to be dead, to be irrelevant. “Won’t you please come to Chicago just to sing?” you know? I thought, yeah, I could, I could. But, in the end, I didn’t, I didn’t do a fucking thing. I couldn’t. I Salingered myself, dad, I put myself away for my own good. And music, how did music get so tangled in with politics? I don’t know—but suddenly it was like, hey, we matter, we’re a voice. And, I don’t know—were we geared up for that? In Memphis? I don’t think so.
Then you know the worst thing happened.
CM: What was that?
BG: Well, Reverend King getting shot in Memphis.
CM: That was before Woodstock.
BG: I know, I know. I’m not making a timeline here, man, I’m riffing on what went wrong, trying to tell you what it felt like. There we were on the world stage suddenly. And Memphis became the face of deadly racism. It was all too much. It was blowing my mind, I admit it. I was feeling wrung out. I had written “Blues for Sandra Leathers,” “Open Channel D,” “Young Avenue Blues,” “The Sins of Monk Cassava,” “Chin-Chin in Eden,” “They Bribe the Lazy Quadling,” ” “Take me for Granted, Please,” “Surfing the Big Muddy,” “If it Wasn’t Televised, It didn’t Happen,” “The Rules for Hide and Seek,” “Picnic in Overton Park,” you know? Stuff like that. And it all seemed so paltry suddenly. So outside of things. I was floundering. I was lost. Only Lor knows this. I went into seclusion, I hid from the world, man. And, really, I think, that was the end of Black Lung. My black period, my darkest days. Lor and I rented a cabin up on the White River and we just hid away. I didn’t write a fucking thing, didn’t even read the newspapers.
I don’t mean to imply that I could have done something, that I had any more power than the Pope or The Beatles or, you know, fucking McNamara. I mean, though, that I wanted to know, I wanted to understand. I wanted the information that Walter Cronkite or Eric Sevareid had, the insider stuff, so that I wasn’t just up there entertaining the fuel for the fire, you know, like the orchestras that played as the Jews were led into the ovens. I started to feel like that, that I was a chimp, a dancing fool. This was like before The Moratorium, right? Before we really all felt the power. The War was just this endless one-note playing over and over and driving us insane—me insane, sorry, driving me insane. And, like, I know that a song is just a song—yet, I have to believe there is something there, an element, a catalytically charged element. I didn’t want religion—who listens to priests, clergymen, even those who take to the streets? Ali has more power. Ali reaches more people. But a song, you know, a good song, well, it does tunnel deep into the consciousness. Did I think I could do anything with the right words, well-placed, well-played? No. No, I knew better. But, I did think—I do think—that we had to stand for something other than pop ditties, you dig? The people who needed help—well, it was all so fucking clear then—AIM and the draft dodgers and the blacks and, Jesus, I mean, if you couldn’t see the problem you really were part of the problem. So, seeing it, what does one do? What could one do? Power, in the end, is just another word, too, but the power is gonna belong to someone, so, in the end, who decides? Who decides Nixon has more power than Mao, or John Lennon has more power than Roy Cohn? You dig? I was wrestling with these things, absurd things, but I couldn’t see clearly. All I saw was blackness, the blackness of dried blood.
I don’t know what Crafty and Skippy thought—I didn’t even leave them a note. I feel bad about it now—and this, finally, I think, was what pissed Crafty off and led him to hire a lawyer for himself, to try and, you know, basically, steal my material. It was like, if you’re not gonna represent yourself well, we’re gonna take away your soul, all your work, all your history. Shit. That shark he hired---what a bastard. But, I was oblivious at the time. God bless Pete. He handled it all. While I was gone. Only he knew I was gone although we were incommunicado, no phone even. I think I called him once from town and said something like, “Don’t tell me about any of the shit that’s going down. Don’t tell me there are more kids dead at more universities. Don’t tell me about Nixon, Crafty or his reptilian lawyer. Just send me my guitar. I did--after a while I wanted it---get my guitar up there, up in my White River seclusion, but I only wanted it to serenade Lorelei. I played on the porch of our cabin, didn’t sing—couldn’t sing—just strummed and hummed to her. And, you know, we didn’t wear any clothes—this was summer and it was beautiful out on that porch—and we became known as the naked hippie couple—among the other cabins spread out along the river. Not that we talked to anyone, but they were aware of us, apparently. And, of course, there were binoculars trained on Lor, as she walked around in the nude. (laughs) But, man, that was my only comfort, my woman, her body, her sweet, enveloping body. She suckled me like I was a child—she has these breasts, well, sorry—anyway, we did a lot of fucking, you know, the kind you do until you cry yourself to sleep. We fucked in the cold water of the river which ran right below the cabin, standing up, man, cold as hell, I held her up and entered her right there, in front of God and everybody. It was heaven. It was hell. I was empty man, as empty as a skull.
And Lor brought me back. Love. That’s what saved me, moved me on down the road. That lost time in Arkansas, that was the crux, the fulcrum that my life turned on. That was the deciding time, the time I became something different. Something better. I believe that, dad, I was reborn in that cabin. I was reborn at my woman’s breast. Can you dig that? Probably not, right, I mean, it’s private and honored so, you can’t dig, am I right?
CM: I follow you. I know, man. I’ve had my dark days of the soul, too.
BG: Have you, Creole? Have you, man? I didn’t know. I’m sorry. Let’s talk about you.
(garbled)
CM: So, it’s ok to say that you had a complete nervous breakdown at this time?
BG: Yeah, sure. That’s what it was. I found myself with existential nausea, the kind you wake up with in the morning and it’s all over you like an animal and there’s nowhere to go because the beast is you. I often backed myself into a corner and curled there like a fetus, as if covering my balls and stomach were protection, as if I feared some attack of a physical nature. This is what the fear does to you. It’s totally debilitating, man. Nausea can unseat you, can defeat the strongest man. And it’s a nausea that is in your blood—your whole body is sick. And, you know, looking at it now, I think I was sick like the country was sick. I was nauseated for the USA, you dig? I took those deaths, that ignominious war, the whole queasy zeitgeist of the times and internalized them. And I couldn’t get away, not in a cabin, not in my music, not anywhere, man, because the enemy was me.
And, dad, anyone who’s ever had that kind of stomach failure, where you feel like your whole system is shutting down on you, knows how bone-deep that kind of pain and fear is. This is when I started shooting horse. I’m not proud of it. You know, I’d always used drugs, to perform, to get up for a performance, to come down afterwards—there were always pills around. But I had stayed away from the hard stuff until my GI went bad. I couldn’t take it—I admit it, I couldn’t take it, man. I started using heroin. It was there for me and no one else was helping with the pain, and I thought, shit, man, I’ll medicate myself. Well, I wasn’t clear enough to be thinking that concretely, but, you dig, I had to do something. I was sneaking the shit, too. Sneaking it behind Lor’s back, which is disgraceful, sad. I’m sorry, Lor. Hell, I’m still sorry.
CM: But you got off the junk.
BG: I—(garbled)—yeah, I mean, yeah.
CM: Did you come back from Arkansas revitalized, renewed?
BG: Naw, it wasn’t that simple. I mean, Lorelei reached down into the cosmic soup and pulled me out. But I was still a mess, you know? I was wrung out, without hope or talent or release. I was limp, like a rope, see, like a rope that formerly held such tension, then snapped—I was that rope. I was weak as a bled calf. I ended up at the funny farm.
CM: The—
BG: The funny farm, the sanitarium, the nut house, the 13th floor. Funny, eh? It really was on the 13th floor of the hospital—I thought they didn’t mark the 13th floor, out of some ancient Masonic superstition among builders and steamfitters. This is what I told the doctors—no wonder they kept me, right? I mean, I got off that elevator on the 13th floor—Lor was literally holding me up—and I freaked out just because of the number. That was just the beginning of my wondrous captivity, my imprisonment in the tower. I had to stay there until the angels came to get me.
CM: How long were you, um, kept?
BG: Shit, what was it, Lor? Three weeks, a month.
LE: About 9 weeks, dear.
BG: Yeah, yeah.
CM: What was the diagnosis?
BG: Well, I mean, shit, it was that I was crazy, right? I thought I was carrying the country’s disease in me, this is what I said. They called it a sort of God complex. What was the word, dysphoria? Something like that. I was joyless—I was beyond joy. I think I presented them with a real interesting case, you know? I mean, one of the doctor’s I know, a young guy, a pretty hip cat, he knew my stuff. He wanted to talk about the music, nothing but the music. I mean, he was disguising it as a mental exam, but it was mostly curiosity, you know, I was the closest thing to a celebrity he’d ever treated. We talked about The Highsteppers, Sam the Sham, I mean, he knew them all, all the old blues guys even. He wanted stories. I don’t think he was speeding my recovery. (laughs)
CM: Nine weeks—that’s a pretty long stay, isn’t it? This was in Memphis?
BG: Yeah, nine weeks, that’s fairly serious to be locked up. Well, sort of locked up. I mean, I could have left. There were no bars or anything. But, I had no will, I had no good reason to do anything. Lorelei would just sit with me and we’d talk about small things, you know, what it was like outside, what she was reading, some painting she was doing. Almost anything but me getting back to the music. See, Lor, instinctively knew that was the sticking point, that me making music again was the key, but, also my deepest fear—that I’d lost it all. That I’d never write another meaningful song. I’d rather not say which hospital this was. Just because of, you know, the privacy thing. I think I’m supposed to be discrete about that.
CM: What turned it around?
BG: I don’t know really. I don’t know if it really got turned around. One day I woke up and I felt pretty good, you know. The sun was coming in the window there and I was digging the way the dust motes floated in it, as if they were little living things, and I thought, I’ve had enough of this shit. And I got dressed. Lor came in that morning and I was sitting there in my clothes waiting for her. We checked me out. We went down to the nurse’s station and said, room 1324 checking out. (laughs) It’s funny now. But, then, it was like we were doing something extraordinary and perhaps not entirely wholesome. We drove home in compete silence. And when we got home, we undressed as if it were all scripted, as if this was the end of that chapter. And when we were both naked, we fell together into the bed. And we fucked and cried and cried and fucked and it was all ok. If only for a little while.
It was shortly after this that I left Memphis for good.
CM: You went to L.A.?
BG: Yeah, shortly after that.
CM: Did you talk to Crafty and Skippy?
BG: Castor and Pollux, sure, I called ‘em up. I said, I’m back from the dead, man.
CM: What was their reaction?
BG: Oh, they were cool, you know. Skippy, God love him. What I didn’t know was that Crafty was already scheming against me, working on getting the rights to the Black Lung stuff reverted entirely to him, since I was non campo mentis. That’s what his lawyer said.